


Flash on my mind

by Spylace



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Chuck Lives, Consent Issues, M/M, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, and misinformed, of the unimformed kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 07:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck survives but without his memories. And as the days go by, Raleigh finds more and more reasons not to want them back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the prompt at Pacific Rim Kink Meme which said: Chuck is alive, memory loss, angst, Raleigh just wants Chuck to be happy
> 
> (http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/350.html?thread=660574#t660574)

Herc left.

Three months after the breach closed, the ex-jaeger pilot resigned his commission as the Marshal of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.

The thing was, Raleigh couldn’t blame him. He could still remember the conversation clearly because the soundproofing for his office was shit. The UN cajoled and pleaded, promised him fame and recognition. He was the highest ranking officer of PPDC, the veteran with the most kills to his name.

Herc reminded them all that he was also a father who never got to hug his son goodbye.

The next day, Herc was gone. Max was gone and even Tendo had no idea where.

As Chief Technical Officer, Tendo was next in line for seniority and inherited the upkeep of the Hong Kong Shatterdome. 

But even with his massively capable copilot at his side, he didn’t have nearly enough political savvy to navigate the tumultuous waters of PPDC’s future. The kaiju threat was over. What people wanted was to move on, put it far behind them as possible.

Those who fought in the war couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

When a call came at four am local time, Raleigh was already awake. It felt like a sign. He volunteered to check it out.

His destination was Guam, the very definition of an island paradise. White sand, blue skies and leafy palms, several naval officers stood waiting as he arrived, some eager for autographs, others for a handshake with the Ranger who had saved the world.

Raleigh smiled politely and posed for Mako’s sake than anything else. She would have undoubtedly been disappointed in him had he started a fistfight with a moron who thought the sacrifices anything less than a great tragedies.

They were heroes. All of them.

But they were also people who once had aspirations and lives beyond the conn-pod, suffered losses most people most would never know. He had fans rooting for him from all across the globe, exotic places he’d never even heard of, cities that never slept to the sound of an ocean.

After the pleasantries, they drove him to the far side of the island where the jungle was the thickest and the road was a nonexistent streak of mud used by local wildlife. In a clearing where small camp had been set up, everyone glared with naked hostility at their arrival. The few children who could be seen peeked around the long skirts and the bare legs of their mothers and grandmothers, mildly curious but inimical to their scrutiny.

Raleigh turned around, about to tear the XO a new one when a familiar face loped into view, his ankles frosted white with salt. Chuck bristled at the sight of uniforms, his dimples creasing into a sneer. He squared his peeling shoulders when he caught sight of him, recognition blooming in his storm grey eyes.

However, instead of bitching about Raleigh’s old age and _what the hell took you so long_ , Chuck broke out into a delighted grin and held out a scarred hand.

“Well shit, never thought I’d see the savior of the world in my neck of woods.”

There was a pit forming at the bottom of his stomach.  The comment had been delivered entirely without sarcasm or insult and the proffered hand seemed to be genuine. Around him, officers fidgeted as though discomfited, realizing that they might have made a mistake.

He and Chuck shook hands, firm and dry, flaked with sand.

“Chuck?” He asked hesitantly, unsure of what he was seeing.

A clone perhaps, a doppelganger? A lost Hansen twin or a body double.

Chuck cocked his head in confusion.

“Sorry” He looked towards others for confirmation. “Do I know you?”

It had to be a joke, a bad one because Chuck was an ass and he didn’t know any good ones. He’d also been stranded on an island, shunted in a sweltering corner with no running water or electricity for several months without anyone noticing or offering help to those who lived with him. Raleigh wasn’t surprised that Chuck, with his adolescent, hair-trigger temper, was pissed.

But how was he even alive?

His tracker went dead when Striker blew the payload. He saw it, Mako saw it, Herc saw it, they all saw it. Yet, here he was, alive and whole save for the shiny burns crisscrossing his entire left side above the hip and a port mark across the chin like he’d been hit with a paintbrush.

Chuck looked friendly but puzzled, not at all the cocky young pilot with eleven kills to his name.

It was like déjà vu when Chuck finally got him to let go of his hand, rubbing it like he couldn’t quite believe that he’d just shaken hands with a jaeger superstar. One of the little girls skipped boldly forward and took hold of the Aussie’s free hand. With a cute curtsy on her downward swing, she chirped “You know Charlie?”

“Charlie?”

It made sense. Chuck was short for Charles. Maybe Charlie had been his nickname when he had been younger.

But before he could ask, a woman placed a grounding hand on Chuck’s shoulder.

Raleigh was surprised that the younger man didn’t simply shrug her off. In fact, he’d never seen Chuck touch anyone casually during their brief acquaintance. Not even his father though it was obvious to the residents of the Shatterdome that their relationship had been somewhat strained which made their piloting all the more unusual.

“We found him on the beach one day.” The woman said. “He remembers nothing. The navy patched him up and sent him back to us.”

“I can speak for myself Maria.” Chuck complained good-naturedly and Raleigh could not deal with it. He expected the sullen kid of their first meeting, the one that pushed and pushed until something gave way, either somebody’s temper or his nose, no consideration for anyone except his goddamned _dog_. Seething, he demanded the officers “And you didn’t think to report this until now?!”   
  
Chuck’s face clouded with familiar anger.   
  
“Report what? Oi mate, those supplies were for us. The _civvies_. ‘S not fair that the fukin’ _army_ gets to keep all of it.”   
  
“We’re the navy.” One of the younger officers snapped and Raleigh felt a momentary fondness for Chuck’s talent at pissing someone off in less than five minutes.  
  
By this point, the XO was sweating bullets from his boiled head.   
  
In a strangled voice he protested “we didn’t know!”   
  
“What’s the big idea anyway?” Chuck interrupted, his accent doing that funny thing where all letters blended into one sound. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”   
  
“Yeah that’s right!” Someone shouted from behind him, the islanders swelling in support of their adoptee.   
  
Raleigh considered himself a learned man, a patient man. That’s why he counted down from ten to one.   
  
He addressed the XO, a certain Lieutenant Commander Sizemore who’d be relocated to a certain Alaskan wall if Raleigh had anything to say about it.

“How many people do you have under your command?”   
  
“Fourteen but...” Realization tugged unflatteringly at the older man’s face.  
  
“Okay, under the authority of the PPDC, I’m requisitioning your base and relocating all these people there.” Technically, he couldn’t. He was only the equivalent of a captain, having made the promotion soon after Operation Pitfall. But he knew that it wasn’t about having a rank, it was knowing what he could do with it.

Also, he was famous. The least the world could do for him wasn’t Chuck remembering his face from a sea of millions Raleigh knew was inside his head. It was giving him a chance to set things right, help people rebuild and reconnect.

The residents of the beachside camp looked shocked. Like they’d been told that they just won the lottery or something.

Chuck grabbed his elbow.   
  
“Oi mate, slow down. What is going on?”   
  
He swallowed.   
  
“Your name is Chuck Hansen.”

There was no recognition. Nothing. Not even a flicker.

“You’ve been missing for a long time.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chuck merely wrinkled his nose at the name.

“What, like the Australian?”

If Raleigh had any doubts about the validity of the other Ranger’s condition, they were swept away in that moment. No one was that good of an actor, least of all an impulsive twenty-one year old that didn’t have the sense to get out of the way of a rampaging kaiju. There was no way that Chuck would seriously dismiss his own country, it just wasn’t done.

“You are the Australian.” He replied, feeling distressed.

Chuck, being the inconsiderate asshole he was, just said “Huh”.

 

As they made the long trek around the island of Guam to the PPDC outpost, the jeep having been sent ahead to alert the crew to evacuate or something, the redhead regaled him with his truncated memories, staring from his discovery on the beach to the couple who adopted him—Maria, the hawkish woman who ran her community like a drill sergeant, and her partner Joon who was apparently a bad influence on kids.

“It was hot!” Joon protested, fanning herself theatrically. Her hair, graying hair clinging to her damp skin. “Ancient Egyptians used to go topless all the time.”

Chuck gave her a dubious look as though he didn’t believe her. “And you!” She accused, pointing a finger at his chest. “I always knew you were special.”

Raleigh stared scandalized as she groped his ass but Chuck shook it off like it was an everyday occurrence. “Joon” He muttered, blushing adorably on the tip of his ears. “We’ve got company.

“You can’t deny our love Charlie-baby.” Joon sang. “I’ll turn you around yet.”

“Joon” Maria warned, clucking at a group of children who had been sent ahead while their parents packed up their meager belongings.

“And you never wondered about where you came from?” Raleigh asked, trying to gage the other man’s reaction. There was none, nothing significant, nothing visible. He might as well have asked about the weather from the blank look Chuck gave him.

“What was there to wonder?” He asked, tapping his temple. “Didn’t have the memories to... care, you know? Anyway, the PPDC practically threw me out once they finished turning me into a Mummy reject.”

Raleigh was vaguely suspicious that he was being played and played well. But that was another black mark against the crew of the Guamian outpost for failing to recognize Chuck, one of their own. “I was pretty bad off.” An arm flexed, showing off the silvery scars on the soft underside. “’s not like I even knew what I looked like.”

And Raleigh found that he simply did not have the heart to argue with something that put such a brilliant smile on the other man’s face.

“Hey, how come no one looked for me?” Chuck asked, as though the thought had just occurred to him.

Raleigh cleared his throat, his face suddenly feeling hot.

“We thought you were dead.”

“Oh, right.”

Silence resumed for a brief moment.

“So did I have any girlfriends or...?”

Raleigh gaped for a moment, nearly breaking his brain by trying to imagine Chuck being in a healthy, functioning relationship. Within a few days at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, he’d learned that the younger ranger’s prickly attitude and icy demeanor for anything less than his dog, his jaeger and his father, probably in that order, coined the term ‘jaegersexual’.

“No!”

“Charlie!” Maria said sternly, pinching him viciously in the bicep. Chuck fell back with a surprised yelp, hoping on one foot and nearly colliding into a waist-high palm before stopping. “What? Geeze Maria, just asking.” At her unimpressed look, the younger man deflated. “Oh right, um... sorry. Sometimes, I don’t think.”

He didn’t mean to but Raleigh couldn’t help but snort, “Looks like you haven’t forgotten everything then.”

Joon broke out into laughter, the children following after though he wasn’t sure they understood the joke.

Chuck grinned and lightly punched Raleigh in the shoulder.

“It’s a gift.”

 

There were about three hundred people living among the tens of thousands that had been killed in the wake of Category II: Hammerhead.

Once the word was out that the PPDC outpost was open to general viewing, outlying pockets of survivors emerged from the jungle, bedraggled but otherwise healthy. There were babies, clinging to their mother’s breasts, too young to have been born before the attack on the island paradise. Chuck’s eyes softened at the sight, long fingers flexing as though wanting to hold one.

He probably missed Max, Raleigh sympathized. Missed the warmth and the solid weight without knowing why.

One by one, the islanders thanked Raleigh for his kindness and steered clear of the officers manning the post. A skinny teenager, a sullen blue fire burning in her eyes, even flipped off a young ensign when he leered. Whistling, Joon commented, “There’s problem right there.”

Dinner was soon served, scrounged up from the MREs and what fresh produce they kept in the kitchens. Raleigh sat disturbed as Chuck wolfed down what looked like a bastardized curry poured over pale sludge. He let out a pornographic moan when he bit into a solid potato and Joon gave him a wink, obviously amused.

“So...” She began, eyes scanning the crowd for her partner. “How did you two meet?”

“Umm...” Raleigh stalled, trying hard not to blurt out the first thing that came to mind.

He couldn’t exactly tell them Chuck was being a little shithead even if it was the truth. Chuck looked up in obvious interest, tongue flickering out to get the smudge of yellow-cream sauce at the corner of his lips. Lacking a proper distraction, his years as a ranger had obviously taught him nothing, he reached out and wiped it off with his thumb.

Joon let out a small whoop and did a fist pump. Chuck gave her a stink eye.

“You gamblin’ again, you know what Maria said about gambling. You know. I know because I was there, listening, because you’re incorrigible.”

“Maria loves me.” Joon replied primly, spooning her share of the meal. “Processed foods, I missed thee.”

Chuck rolled his eyes.

Raleigh stayed the night. He couldn’t not.

It was obvious that Chuck had found something good on the island, a family who loved him unconditionally beyond the ties of blood. He felt humbled at the sight of the three huddled together in communion, Joon curling a reassuring hand at the base of his neck. What right did he have to take Chuck who could still be another man, who could be dead, when he looked so happy?

Because he wasn’t—Raleigh realized. Despite his words, his glib flippancy, Chuck wanted to know. He had only been resigned to not knowing.

Chuck needed Max, his father, the Jaeger Program and everything that came with it. The stranger in Chuck’s skin was just that, a placeholder for when the memories came back. And Maria and Joon knew, that was why they were saying goodbye.

Frantically, Raleigh emptied his wallet of bills and memorabilia, anything that could be useful or be used as cash. He pressed his phone in Joon’s hand; he could get another one later. He was only a little sorry that she’d end up dealing with the reporters but at least this way, they could keep in contact.

At dawn, Chuck came to find him, looking like a kid who’d been told that he was about to meet God.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Chuck bit his lip, making him look more his age. He still couldn’t believe the fact that the younger Hansen started piloting at fifteen. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he had been fifteen but he was sure no one told him he had to save the world.

“They think I’m dead right?” Chuck started in a hushed voice. “Won’t they be ropeable?”

Raleigh stared, flummoxed.

“Angry” Chuck corrected himself with a frustrated hiss. “Won’t they be _angry_?”

“That you’re alive?”

The air seemed to go out of the younger man.

“Right” He scuffed the ground with cheap sandals held together by a roll of duct tape. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want.” Raleigh said finally. “You could stay here.”

“Seems like a shame.” Chuck replied after a thought, laughing with a ragged edge. “Getting people worked up then not bothering to show up.”

Raleigh didn't know what to do. He threw his arms around the younger man as a last resort, feeling as though he might disappear, dissolve like a mirage if he let go. Chuck stiffened in his arms but he only held tigher saying, "People missed you while you were gone. Some of us would be happy just knowing that you're still alive. Chuck, none of us are angry at you for not coming back. We're... I'm glad you're okay, okay?"

Slowly, Chuck brought his arms up and thumped him twice on the back.

“Okay”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the kind comments!

Chuck threw up, twice.

“Some Ranger you are.” Raleigh grumbled, barefoot as he rubbed circles into the younger man’s back.

The Australian pilot could only groan in reply, clutching the barf bag like a lifeline as the pilot looked back at them in disgust and bewilderment.

He had to admit, it was pretty funny. Who knew that Chuck Hansen was prone to air sickness?

“You sure you’ve got the right guy?” The pilot asked sarcastically, preparing for a landing. Chuck flinched at the question, his shoulders drawn up tight like a bow. Raleigh gripped his shoulder and glared, barking “Hey, eyes up front okay? A little respect.”

“Whatever I did to deserve this” Chuck swallowed, grey eyes rolling in their sockets like bright marbles. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s a long list.” Raleigh joked then sobered as they touched down, choppy winds doing nothing to hold back the crowd that had gathered to see them. Chuck paled even further if that was possible, freckles lining the bridge of his nose and across his cheeks. “Now come on.”

As he stood up, Chuck reached out and grabbed his hand.

“Don’t leave me?”

Raleigh faltered and squeezed back.

“I won’t.” He promised.

As soon as their feet hit the tarmac, the crowd burst into cheers. Chuck was adorably confused at the heartfelt clapping, his head turning this way and that as though he could not find a single thing to look at. Camera flash blinding their eyes, Striker Eureka’s team pushed their way forward, throwing increasingly filthy suggestions as endearments. Chuck smiled at them hesitantly, large dimples marking his sunken cheeks.

“Raleigh” Mako said breathlessly, shoving aside more than one engineer if they hadn’t gotten out of the way fast enough. Raleigh let go of Chuck’s hand and hugged her tight, wanting to tell her everything in the past twenty-four hours he could not on the phone and why weren’t human beings born with the natural ability to drift?

“Chuck” She greeted in a slightly measured tone as though unsure how he would react.

One of the islanders, Michael Kwak, who served as a doctor, told him that Chuck had retrograde amnesia. He couldn’t remember anything about his past life other than his name and that he was Australian. But he could tear down and rebuild a generator in time for supper and knew more about outdoor survival than normal kids his age.

“Hello” Chuck said softly, color returning to his cheeks. He held out a hand before retracting it like an injured limb, tucking it behind himself as though the sight of his blistered and burnt skin offended him. “I guess you know me then.”

“Yes” Mako answered and threw her arms around her fellow Ranger’s neck. “Welcome home Chasu-kun.”

 

During the time he was gone, the Shatterdome had not sat idle. PPDC had finally located a replacement marshal. His name was Daniel Goldberg, an intense man with laser-eyed focus and tight curls around his lopsided head. When asked, it was said that he had gotten it during Tresspasser’s attack on San Francisco, when the Golden Gate Bridge fell with him sitting in the middle.

No one knew the true story. Raleigh didn’t think he wanted to know. The man sided up to him, the top of his head barely reaching his shoulders and asked, “That him?”

Through the glass, they could see Chuck examined for his burns and disfigurement. Mostly superficial, the pod had protected him from the radiation but it hadn’t been designed to survive a nuclear missile. The life support system had failed immediately, the inner panels rapidly heating up to cause massive burns across the left side of his body. He had also been deprived of oxygen for an indeterminate amount of time. His survival, according to Dr. Walker, was nothing short of a miracle.

Raleigh smiled inwardly; he’d have expected nothing less of a jaeger pilot.

“We’re still waiting for DNA, but it’s him.”

“Christ” Goldberg drawled, drawing a hand down his dark stubble. “What a mess.”

“What happens now?” Raleigh asked, waving a hand when Chuck looked towards him.

“Now? Damage control. This is a hell of a thing to spring on the world but who knows? It might just flush Hansen Sr. from hiding.”

Raleigh’s heart sank.

“He doesn’t know?”

“Either he doesn’t know or he doesn’t believe that this is him.” Goldberg grunted, flexing his massive forearms. Despite his recent promotion, the man was out of uniform, wearing fatigues and olive-green shirt preferred by the jarheads on base.

Raleigh heard that the man had been accosted earlier by a ranger who hadn’t known about the switch in the hierarchy and was chewed out thoroughly. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll put him to work. Make no mistake Becket, I’m not about to have the Pan Pacific Defense Corps go belly up from lack of funding. Everyone loves a hero. Our boy Lazarus might just fit the bill.”

 

“Is it always like this?” Chuck asked, staring down at the brewing media storm.

“Only when someone comes back from the dead.”

Less than four hours after their arrival, the news broke across channels that Chuck Hansen, the hero of Operation Pitfall, had been found alive.

News vans gathered outside the Shatterdome like biblical locusts, waves of umbrellas and inverted satellite dish pressing against the gates. When Raleigh found the idiot who leaked the story, he was going to kill them.

At least Herc couldn’t miss this. Unless he was really living off the outback, skinning kangaroo and dueling dish-sized spiders to the death.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Marshal Goldberg had been planning to announce Chuck’s resurrection to the world in the morning on CNN, the largest surviving news network in Hong Kong. The schedule merely got pushed up a little.

But Raleigh wished that they could have put it off for a little while longer because this Chuck Hansen wasn’t the one on screen in full combat gear and swagger flipping the reporters off. This Chuck Hansen knew nothing of himself except what they had revealed to him so far, a ranger, a warrior, a hero, and nothing of the person he had been or what he liked (jaegers), what he hated (Raleigh) or when his birthday even was.

“No fuck you.” Chuck swore into a borrowed phone. “I do not walk like I have the claps. Why are you calling anyway?”

Mako sat beside him in the empty cafeteria, a giant LCD screen where the war clock had once been. Goldberg took it down with a complaint about loose discipline and decreased morale. The Japanese ranger simply looked tired as she stared, bags under her eyes big enough to haul away kaiju parts. Even her blue highlights seemed faded, longer as though she hadn’t had the time to re-dye them.

Chuck saw her and raised half a spoonful of mashed carrots in greetings from across the room, his expression swiftly morphing into one of utter disgust at whatever Joon, it had to be her right?  said on the other end of the line. Mako let out a sudden throaty sound and Raleigh whipped his head around, fearing that she was about to cry, choke, something.

She shrugged, biting back a smile.

“I have not seen him this red since a thong landed on his face during an interview.”

Raleigh sympathized. It was hard to believe that there had been a time that he’d liked the attention, wanted it, craved it.

Before Yancy.

He wondered if it was worse for Mako who found herself thrust in the spotlight following the death of her friends and family, whatever fulfillment of avenging her parents evaporating in the face of the fact that she had lost them all over again.

Pentecost was gone. Even if Chuck lived, there was no way that her mentor survived Striker Eureka’s detonation. He knew he would have never held up as well. Probably broke down the moment a mike was thrust in his face.

Chuck made a face. “And where would I have had the time to find groupies?” He complained. “You know what, just forget it. Put Maria on the line.”

“Long day?”

Mako nodded slowly.

“Alright, _please_!”

“Too long.” Her brown eyes softened. “But it is good to see Chuck.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you too.”

Raleigh licked his lips. “Earlier, you said something. I couldn’t quite catch it but you called him something else.”

“Heeey Maria, I’m okay. Really. Joon can tell you all about it.”

“Chasu-kun” Mako replied, lost in nostalgia. “When I first arrived at the Shatterdome, I did not speak English. Chuck and I were the only children there. We became friends.”

“The DNA hasn’t come back yet so the jury’s still out on that one. Who knows?”

“When you two first met...” Mako shook her head. “Perhaps that is a story for another time.” But he knew it already, knew that once upon a time, fifteen-year-old Chuck Hansen had been an avid fan of Gipsy Danger and the Becket brothers. “Chuck was normally not so rude. I think that you bring the worst out in him.”

“Just me?” Raleigh asked playfully. “Wow, I feel special.”

“Each other” Mako corrected herself after a pause.

Silence fell upon the cafeteria, broken up only by scattered groups of people sneaking glances at Chuck when they thought he wasn’t looking and when an expletive inevitably found itself into the Australian’s mouth.

“Hey, you think... if I’m not the guy they’re looking for, I could come back?”

He and Mako shared a look. Voices carried well in the cafeteria, something people had used as an advantage for many years. However, having lived out in the open for so long among the shrieking children and birdsong, Chuck seemed to have forgotten how to use an inside voice.

The tittering from neighboring tables grew louder, nearly drowning out his next words. “No Maria, they’re treating me good. Real good. Yeah, maybe.” Chuck laughed. “And maybe Joon’s right.”

Mako set an ipad on her lap and activated its screen. It lit up with bright colors completely out of place in the Spartan quarters of the Shatterdome. “I brought him this.” She explained. “It is his service files and the interviews he did while he was still active.” Together, they turned their gaze towards Chuck and the rest of the room. “But now.” Mako bit her lips. She didn’t need to say what she was thinking. He already knew. “I do not think it will be enough.”

 

“That was me?” Chuck asked in awe, looking at the clips of the newscast Tendo had collected for him. “I did all that? And the person beside me. That... that’s my dad right?” His fingers faltered in sliding the images. “He’s not...”

“He’s alive.” Raleigh assured him swiftly, deciding to leave out the part that they didn’t know if that was in present tense or not. “We just don’t know where. He... he took your death pretty hard.”

Chuck was silent for a long minute.

“Was he” He started hesitantly, a sweep of molten eyelashes hiding his grey eyes. “Was he proud of me?”

They discussed drifting as treatment for Chuck’s amnesia. It was a simple, yet elegant solution. Introduce to him the memories of Chuck Hansen through the eyes of another. Mako was his childhood friend. Most of the now-defunct Sydney Shatterdome remembered him fondly growing up. DNA results were in and they were one-hundred percent match. But Dr. Walker had thrown the suggestion out the window as fast as it had come in, chewing on a fat cigar.

“None of you have drifted with him before. This is retrograde amnesia. Putting him in a familiar surrounding might help, it might not. He’ll either get his memories back gradually or wake up tomorrow with it intact.”

But that, Raleigh thought bitterly, did not put a stopper on Goldberg’s plan to turn Chuck into a media darling. He only had to be coached and fed a few lines. The newfound shyness and humility could be passed off as survivor’s guilt. Raleigh knew a lot about survivor’s guilt, it wasn’t something he was keen on inflicting on someone else.

“Was I much of a twot as I was in the interviews?” Chuck asked bewildered, wincing at the way the Chuck Hansen on screen barreled past the cameras with a single ‘fuck you’ regarding the destruction of Tasmanian Tango. It was like seeing two different people. A good Chuck and bad Chuck—no, that was too simple.

It was like a modern day prince and the pauper and Chuck was supposed to play the arrogant ranger who had yet to come up from the deep blue sea.

“Worse” Raleigh answered. The corners of Chuck’s lips twitched briefly though his eyes remained uncertain, clouded like water stained by kaiju blue. He wrapped a hand around the nape of his neck and Chuck looked up. “Hey” He said. “Don’t worry about it. Reporters are like cockroaches, they lap this shit up.”

They sat companiably, sifting through the pictures and videos, quizzing each other on kaijus and jaegers, their pilots, the kills and cities destroyed. Yesterday’s Chuck Hansen would have bragged about his ten—eleven—kills at the age of twenty-one. Today, he stared at them in wonder, eyes sparkling with excitement rather than anger at the millions lost to the monsters from the breach.

It made Raleigh feel a little sick.

“Were we together?” Chuck asked bluntly because missing memories did not detract from his absolute lack of social grace, something that was clearly hardwired to his DNA. Raleigh was rendered speechless and the other man blushed, the swell of his cheeks tinted red as he attempted a facsimile of a smile.

“What gave you that idea?”

“Nothing” Chuck said lightly, clearing his throat. “Sorry, it’s just that... you’ve been so nice to me and everything.”

“Mako’s nice to you.” Raleigh replied, grasping at straws for a way to get out the inevitable train wreck.

“Yeah, Mako... she’s real something. She’s great. Everyone’s been great.”

Chuck flashed his dimples again, white-knuckling the tablet computer with his peeling hand. Raleigh looked at him in concern.

Months on a remote island with the barest medical facilities had left the ranger a shadow of his former self. It wasn’t just the burns tracking down his entire left side, cutting off at the shins as though someone had taken a forging iron to his skin. Chuck had lost a lot of weight, maybe twenty percent in the time he was gone, most of it muscle. He would need care before he returned to his fighting shape. Five meals a day were a must, strictly enforced by protein bars and shakes that people pressed into his hands by the hour.

Had it been Chuck, and it was hard for him to believe that he missed the fucker, he would have yelled at people, hole himself up somewhere with his dog until a kaiju came calling. But no more drifts, no more breach at the bottom of the ocean. No Herc, no Max, no Chuck. Just a Chuck-shaped stranger with his cat-grey eyes that shifted like a storm-tossed cloud, nothing like the ranger who was ready to die.

There was nothing in the dry-mouth press of lips. It was effortless, polite, benign—sweet. Almost too easy.

Chuck hesitated like a shy virgin and he did wonder, was Chuck a virgin? There were no relationships to be found in the confines of articles, neat columns in rows that spelled nothing but intrigue.

Raleigh remembered his years as a pilot, the wild parties, the drinks, the girls.

He remembered Yancy telling him to focus.

Nothing lasted forever.

With a small sigh, Chuck kissed him back.

Eventually, they had to come up for air. But whatever Chuck saw in his eyes at that moment seemed to calm him. He leaned in for a second kiss, then another, and another until they somehow ended up in Raleigh’s room, legs tangled in each other’s until they landed in the cramped bunk, the tablet spinning off under the bed.

“You like that?” Raleigh teased, thumbing his waist band where the burns crossed over into plains of smooth skin. “How about this?” He kissed his belly button up to a nipple and circled it with his tongue. Chuck bucked against him in surprise, then a smoother thrust demanding more. “Or this?”

“You’d know better than me mate.” Chuck laughed, rolling over obligingly.

Raleigh realized with a pang that he really didn’t.

They hadn’t planned it well; they hadn’t planned it at all. There was barely enough elbow room for him to maneuver as he pulled the younger man’s shirt off, thank fuck that Chuck could no longer wear shirts sizes too small.

Chuck looked away embarrassed at the mass of scars. Raleigh could tell where the suit melted off and burned into his body, hatchet-marks bruising his ribs. He traced these reverently, reading the history of his survival with his lips, a miracle.

“Then let’s find out, together.”


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, Chuck met with a reporter who’d swallowed enough gag orders that all she could really ask was the ranger’s age, height, and shoe size. But Chuck Hansen was revealed to the world alive and well, recovering from the injuries he suffered from Operation Pitfall. Stock footage of the jaegers being lowered into the ocean was shown in the background as the reporter nodded sympathetically at the list of injuries and treatments Chuck had memorized an hour prior.  
  
“And do you have a special someone who can help you?”  
  
“Yeah” His face softened, eyes focusing on the camera as though he could somehow see Raleigh through the lens. “I do.”

 

Mako dragged him off as soon as the interview was over, while he was still grinning broadly enough for his face to ache. Considering the efficiency of the Shatterdome grapevine, he was surprised that she had not sought him out sooner. She did not have to break things, slam doors or raise her voice to get her point across. Silence was just as potent a weapon in his co-pilots hands.  
  
Raleigh wondered what it might have been like had he been fluent in Japanese. He had enough. Through the drift, he had gained a better feel for the language, but obviously not enough in the marvelous restraint the young woman showed, restricting her words to English.  
  
“What have you done?” Mako demanded, anger simmering in her voice. “Why does Chuck think that he is in a relationship?”  
  
 _With you_ was implied. He fidgeted beneath her benevolent glare, feeling like something scraped off the bottom of her military-issue boots. There were crow’s feet beginning from the corners of her eyes, lines that had not been there before, added in the few short months after canceling their apocalypse.  
  
Raleigh felt at once guilty and defensive. He didn’t agree with Goldberg’s methods. Chuck needed more time. He needed more than to be paraded around like a doll, parroting words that he didn’t understand, missing his adoptive family enough that he wouldn’t go anywhere without his burner phone.  
  
But what was also true was that the Shatterdome was floundering. Like Pentecost before him, Goldberg was also having problems wresting the necessary cash flow from the UN.  
  
The PPDC was the largest, active organized military unit after the Kaiju War. Despite the lull of peace, they could not afford to be shut down.  
  
“You heard what Dr. Walker said. It won’t hurt him.”  
  
“That does not mean you can give him false hopes and fabricate lies he cannot remember.” She hissed, getting into his face. It was what had drawn his attention in the first place. Under the cover of respectability, Mako Mori was just as gritty and mean as the next ranger, completely unapologetic, prepared to run the entire Shatterdome had she been a little older.  
  
“What’s the big deal anyway?” He protested.  
  
“The big deal is that Chuck is smart.” Mako explained slowly as though talking to a person with an intracranial bleed. “He will think it strange when he finds no information connecting him to you.”  
  
“Come on Mako” Raleigh coaxed, unwilling to give up his case as lost. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”  
  
Mako thinned her lips.

 

Raleigh had seen guys like Chuck before, arrogant assholes with swagger a mile-wide until they suddenly weren’t, when a kaiju punched through a jaeger’s armor and raked its claws through the conn-pod, ripping out the pilots and the generators before they could even think about screaming.  
  
He’d seen guys like Chuck before, rangers with purpose and driven anger, walking like they wanted to bruise and smear the molecules of oxygen like flies across a windowpane. And like them, Chuck was confrontational, stripped down to the raw necessities in being human.  
  
But unlike them, he also knew what he was doing.  
  
Chuck was right on the night of his and Mako’s first drift; he just hadn’t wanted to admit it. So what was he doing on the pier holding hands with a grey-eyed stranger who fed pieces of stale bread to red-capped seagulls, a permanent crease between his eyes as though he could almost taste the memory of Max and the drift with his father?  
  
Maybe this was what Chuck might have been, what they all could have been before the Kaiju War. Had they grown up as innocents, feigning ignorance just as dangerous as the deep blue sea.  
  
Mako’s words had planted seeds of doubt in his mind. It was all fine and dandy while Chuck didn’t remember, while he was a blank slate frighteningly new like a newborn.  
  
The Chuck he knew would have never given him the time of day. He would have spat and cursed, pretended he didn’t exist or made snide remarks about sub-par jockeys but he would have never in a million years lay calmly at his side, his face smoothed out into the boyish youth of twenty-one. The few moments of tenderness had all been reserved for his dog and his father when he thought no one was looking.  
  
Unsettled, he moved to get out of bed. Chuck held on like a limpet, a heavy arm draped possessively around his middle, breathing noisily into his neck. “Where are you going?” He rumbled, his voice blurred with sleep. A hand groped his way down his front, a blistered finger dragging a reluctant circle through his treasure trail.  
  
“Go to sleep” He whispered when it seemed as though Chuck might follow, pressing him down against the mattress with his weight. The younger ranger hummed obediently, his other hand wrapped around the burner phone. Goldberg had cracked an actual smile after the interview, claiming that their ‘relationship’ was a stroke of genius.  
  
Raleigh could have laughed. Their relationship was less than two days old. Worst of all, there was still no news from Herc. He would have thought that the elder Hansen would have at least tried to murder him for defiling his son.  
  
Whispers followed him the next day when he cut in front of the line, juggling two lunch trays—one a hamburger and the other overflowing with all the things that he thought that Chuck might like. He didn’t remember the other ranger actually eating the one time they had all sat down together for lunch. But he knew that Chuck had been living on nothing but crabs, coconuts and MREs in the past few months. He shoved a slice of cake in a lonely corner just in case.  
  
Raleigh scowled when an engineer for the newly reactivated Horizon Brave series ducked her head as their eyes met. Somehow, a great chasm had formed in the time the interview had aired and when he had gone to sleep. The newer crew members seemed to be baffled at the big reveal but there were people he knew from LA and Anchorage, people he kept disappointing over and over again.  
  
Between Raleigh’s lie and Chuck’s ignorance, they were paralyzed in their indecision. Mako was disapproving and Tendo firmly pretended that it had not happened on his watch. It was enough for him to signal Chuck to follow him to the loading bay. Without the four Jaegers standing in four corners like benevolent guardians, the chamber was empty and quiet. He kept expecting a basketball to fly his way or the elegant sweep of Sasha Kaidanovsky’s coattails.  
  
“Is there something wrong?” Chuck asked timidly, prodding a plate of blue jello. “You seem distracted.”  
  
Wonders would never cease, a ranger with manners.  
  
“I’m just thinking.” Raleigh reassured him.  
  
“Don’t hurt yourself.” Chuck teased before falling quiet, one hand fiddling with his phone. “We uh...” he cleared his throat. “Do this often mate?”  
  
He blinked. “What do you mean?”  
  
“We just sit here?” Chuck clarified, cutting his spoon through the air.  
  
“What’s wrong with here?”  
  
“Nothing...” Chuck shrugged. “It’s just doesn’t seem like me. That’s all.”  
  
“You don’t remember you.” Raleigh countered, harsher than he had intended. Chuck flinched, folding up on himself as though gravity had suddenly changed directions. “Shit” He breathed “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.” Raleigh reached out with his hand, pulling the plastic spoon free of the younger ranger’s grip.  
  
Their fingers laced together, his thumb landing on top. It somehow seemed appropriate.  
  
Minutes trickled by. “I don’t know what you want from me.” Chuck whispered, looking away.  
  
 _I don’t either_ —he wanted to confide, but he didn’t. He pushed the slice of cake forward like a piece offering, its wedge shape slightly squashed and sticky from the vanilla frosting.  
  
“Just you” He said, feeling like he was pulling teeth.  
  
Chuck gave him a crooked smile and it was somehow even worse.

 

Chuck was a restless sleeper, shifted a lot like he was hiding something beneath the mattress. He was also an unrepentent blanket hog and Raleigh found himself awake at three am in the morning, slightly chilled from the early summer air.  
  
He rolled over, wrapping a hand across the back of the younger man’s neck. His thumb curled automatic under the bitten earlobes and the spectacular teeth marks he had left just before they had gone to bed.  
  
Raleigh figured there was a special place in hell for people like him but he couldn’t stop.  
  
It was a fucking novelty to see Chuck so vulnerable, a spray of gold dusting his eyelids as they fluttered in sleep. A baser part of him, primal and possessive, growled in satisfaction when the grey eyes focused on him hazily, not quite yet awake. Beneath his palms, Chuck was warm and he was alive. Air rushed into his lungs, swelling his ribs with relief.  
  
The ocean had taken him when he was young, tore him from everything normal and raised him a warrior before his time. But the ocean had also given him back so shiny and new that it hurt, like he might damage the ex-ranger if he didn’t let go.  
  
Mouthy little bastard with problems against authority, baggage and bad news, yet Raleigh couldn’t force himself to let go. It wasn’t love, it couldn’t have been. It was compassion and pity and mutual attraction, of being in the right place and the right time.  
  
“I dreamt that you were gone.” Chuck mumbled sleepily, headbutting him in the chin.  
  
“I’m here.” Raleigh replied, voice creaky from disuse.  
  
“I know.” The younger man sighed, biting his throat. “But you were gone.”  
  
“Where was I?”  
  
“Somewhere cold.” Chuck said with a quirk of his lips. “I hope you were miserable.”  
  
“I was” Raleigh blurted out before he even thought about stopping himself.  
  
Chuck stilled and twisted away, the hot breath of his mouth leaving his skin. He rolled to the farthest corner of the bunk bed, which wasn’t far, just enough to have his back pressed against something solid. “You left.” Chuck stammered, grey eyes wide and confused. “You left without saying goodbye.”  
  
“I didn’t tell anyone goodbye. It happened a long time ago.”  
  
Whatever joy Chuck may have felt at his returning memories were dwarfed by the fact that Raleigh had left at all. “I don’t understand.” He pleaded.  
  
“Yancy died.” He said flatly. “We were in the drift one moment and the next, he was dead.”  
  
Chuck swallowed. “You felt him—”  
  
Raleigh didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Didn’t want to talk to Chuck who wanted to listen and looked like he might actually understand. But he’d always had bad taste in partners. Wasn’t this the proof of that?  
  
He got out of bed, feeling Chuck’s fingers ghost against the fine hairs down his spine.  
  
“ _Raleigh..._ ”  
  
Suddenly, he couldn’t stand it anymore.  
  
He left the room and didn’t look back.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Raleigh kissed Chuck awake like it meant something, the moment from last night a thing to be forgotten, a nightmare gone in the blink of an eye. Thankfully, the younger ranger never mentioned it and welcomed the exploratory tongue at the edge of his lips, confused when he tried to apologize.  
  
“It’s normal for people not to remember their dreams.” Dr. Walker said patiently when he asked.  
  
“But it wasn’t a dream.”  
  
Walker raised a thick, grey eyebrow which looked like a line of lint crawling across his forehead.  
  
“Then perhaps you should consider that he doesn’t want to talk about it either. Relationships are hard. In your case,” The doctor shrugged ironically. “Have you even thought about telling him the truth?”  
  
“It’s not my fault that he assumed that we were an item.” Raleigh grumbled.  
  
“But you encouraged him didn’t you?” Walker pointed out, “You deliberately led him to think that he was correct.”  
  
Raleigh didn’t have an answer for him.

Christie Matheson, one of Gipsy’s engineers before she was reassigned to upgrading the Horizon Braves, poked her head in through the doorway. “Becket, there you are. Come quick, your boyfriend’s gone and hurt himself again.”  
  
  
Despite all fears to the contrary, it wasn’t anything serious. Chuck had been distracted during a sparring session and ended up with a wallop to his head. There was a sizeable goose egg swelling behind his left temple and Raleigh poked at it to Chuck’s pained “Stop that” and a slap to his hand.  
  
Raleigh griped, “I swear to God, I can’t leave you for one second...”  
  
“Oi” The younger man protested, “Who died and made you my mother?”  
  
“Someone’s got to take care of you.” Raleigh retorted.  
  
Chuck grinned easily. “Have you seen the nurse yet? She’s got tits the size of Striker’s...”  
  
“Oooookay” Raleigh interrupted, putting his hand over the ex-ranger’s mouth. “And here I was hoping you had some sense knocked into you.” For that, Chuck stuck his tongue against the inside of his palm, tracing the lifeline from finger to finger. He snorted, leaning close until their noses almost brushed. “Nice try, I grew up with a brother remember?”  
  
Strangely, mentioning Yancy did not hurt as much as he’d expected. It was as though in the daylight, all the guilt and shame had sloughed off his shoulders, leaving him free to remember his older brother as he should have been—alive.  
  
“Chuck?” He frowned as he caught a pearly tear down one eye, wiping it away with his thumb. Chuck jerked back in surprise as though he had not expected Raleigh to be there. He pressed their foreheads together. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”  
  
“I... I don’t know.” Chuck answered in a bewildered voice identical to his own, hands catching the fistful of salt that flowed freely over his cheeks. “I’m fine.” He said faintly, flexing his fingers this way and that as though he could somehow make it disappear. Trembling, he dropped his hand in his lap and repeated, “I’m okay.”  
  
  
“Hey Tendo, have you seen Chuck?”  
  
Tendo Choi looked up from his well-deserved nap across the LOCCENT consol. Since Jaegers were no more, there was no one else in the control tower which made it a favored hangout for rangers and crewmembers who had been there during Operation Pitfall. At the moment, only the chief technical officer occupied its austere heights, the spit-shined windows giving them a clear view of the hanger where old Jaegers were being reassembled.  
  
“No” Tendo replied in plain annoyance and disapproval.  
  
Raleigh didn’t think that older man should be the one to judge. After all, he was the one who got into regular scrapes with husbands and boyfriends.  
  
“Any idea where he could be?”  
  
“Nope” Tendo repeated, popping his spine in an obvious attempt at conveying his exhaustion. “He’s probably down in the labs hiding from the cameras. You take care of your boyfriend Raleigh.”  
  
Raleigh stifled the automatic ‘he’s not my boyfriend’.  
  
“Thanks” He said.  
  
The other man shook his head.

“Hope you know what you’re doing ace.”  
  
  
In the end, Raleigh found Chuck in the locker rooms, stumbling around like a drunk, three-legged goat. Concerned, he cleared his throat loudly before rapping his knuckles on the metal doors. Chuck acted as though he hadn’t heard, manic in his movements as he paced down the length of a bench and jumped off. He landed heavily, the meaty thud of his bare feet on the concrete floor doing little to reassure him that the ex-pilot hadn’t gone around the bend.  
  
“Chuck?” He called softly, putting a hand on his shoulder. A bullet might have been less painful the way Chuck reacted to his touch, throwing himself violently against the tiled walls as though expecting to be hurt. His burnt hand stood out in stark relief against the grey tiles, shiny and pink with new skin.  
  
“Raleigh?” He croaked, grey eyes wondering.  
  
“Chuck” Raleigh answered with confidence he did not feel. He shrugged, letting the motion flow smoothly down his shoulders. “You missed our date.”  
  
“I...” a hand swept up, curling against the red-blond hair. “I lost track of time.”  
  
He smiled. “I saved something for you. Your favorite.”  
  
Chuck grimaced. “Even I can’t eat that much meat.” At his smirk, the ex-ranger scowled “You know what I mean.”  
  
“Well come on,” Raleigh coaxed, “wouldn’t want the lunch ladies’ cooking go to waste.”  
  
But Chuck refused to take the bait, peeling himself off the wall to resume his pace across the locker room benches. He sighed. “What’s wrong now?”  
  
“I can’t find it.” Chuck muttered, turning about, his hands deep in his pockets.  
  
“Find what?”  
  
“My phone! I know I had it with me this morning but I can’t remember where I put it!”  
  
“Did you check our room?”  
  
 _Our_ —Raleigh hadn’t meant to be condescending but he was being constantly surprised by his own mouth. Our, honestly. Chuck scowled at him, reminding him that there were more important issues at the present. “Let’s go to medical okay? I think you hit yourself on the head harder than you thought you did. I can get you a new one later.”  
  
“Fuck you. I don’t want a new one.” Chuck snarled, tearing himself away. It was a reaction so unlike the mild-mannered young man he met on the PPDC outpost that Raleigh found himself momentarily taken aback by the vitriol. Something like excitement and relief filtered through his guts like a soothing balm. Chuck looked utterly devastated when he saw. “You don’t know what it’s like. When people just say shit to you and expect you to get it.”  
  
He stalked forward, cupped Raleigh’s chin with his left hand, fingers digging into the hollow of his cheeks. Raleigh stood still as Chuck shuddered and grieved. “Why are you here Raleigh? I’m not even the bloke you fell in love with.”  
  
No, because there was never such a man. Everything they had done together was a culmination of their imagination, carnal desire that rose past death and destruction.  
  
Raleigh had never loved Chuck Hansen, not really. The kid had been confused, annoying as hell, kind of like a younger version of himself but with a father and no social skills. Of the many the Jaeger Program had trained over the years, Chuck had been its greatest success.  
  
Chuck was a ranger, a pilot, a warrior, not the kind of person Raleigh ever thought he could fall for.  
  
“I know” He answered, leaning close. Raleigh licked the port mark across his chin, a splash of maroon like juice stain his fingers were just itching to rub off. Chuck trembled as he captured his lips and breathed into his mouth. “But you could be.”  
  
  
Raleigh wondered why he had never thought of calling Maria and Joon. Of course, seeing as how he and Chuck were never far apart, he had trouble procuring privacy for himself to make the call.  
  
Luckily, time was on his side for once and as soon as Chuck nodded off against his arm, Raleigh greeted his fellow conspirator in insomnia. He didn’t know what time it was on the other side of the Pacific but knew that Joon wouldn’t miss his call for the world. Fingers tense, he dialed his phone one number at a time, heard it ring five times before a sleep-roughened voice picked up, breathing smokily into the receiver.  
  
Despite the heat of the generators, Raleigh couldn’t help but shiver. They exchanged requisite pleasantries. He was glad to hear that the command at Guam capitulated like wet cardboard once the islanders took charge. Maria extended a formal invitation and he accepted gratefully, thinking that Tendo could appreciate a bit of sun as well.  
  
“How is Charlie?”  
  
“I was hoping,” Raleigh answered diplomatically. “You could help me figure that out.”  
  
Chuck Hansen had been found clinging to debris, most likely the remnants of his escape pod once he punched through the stuck doors which had been melted by the force of the radiation. The entire right half of his body had been burned, second to third degree burns stretching from the stripe on his chin down to his waist where bits of plastic material had been welded to his chest.  
  
He was delirious by the time he was fished out of the surf, nearly two days after Operation Pitfall. The entire island had been lit with fireworks in celebration at the apocalypse’s end. Only a sharp-eyed young boy, desperate to relieve himself on a tropical bush, saved him from being taken by the tide. Chuck could have been speaking anything from bad Cantonese to Flemish French the way he babbled on about the Kaiju. But by the time they sought help from the PPDC outpost, he had fallen silent, waking a week later with no recollection of his past life.  
  
Guam had been a paradise before outsiders came and it stilled offered shelter to those who needed it. Chuck had needed a home more than anything. He recovered, his flesh blackening and bruising before being shed like molt. Sometimes, he would stare past the horizon in the westerly direction as though he saw a ship coming or something only he could perceive. He always returned to himself, a polite, considerate young man, who never failed to weigh the daily catch on his shoulders as well as keeping children occupied so they would not venture into the deeper waters.  
  
The unexpected tidbits of Chuck’s life after death, before the Shatterdome, caught him like a punch between his ribs. Maria fell silent, perhaps sensing that she had shared too much with a stranger who had taken her almost-brother-son away.  
  
“Was he ever...” Raleigh struggled, forcing the words off his numbed tongue. “Forget things? Misplace keys maybe?”  
  
The sound of Maria’s laughter was rich and heart wrenching.  
  
“No, but that is not unusual. We had very little then.”  
  
Right, because it was hard to misplace a rope of headless snakes.  
  
“Okay” He sighed, thumping his head lightly against the wall. “That answers my question.”  
  
Maria was silent for a moment.  
  
“Will he be alright?”  
  
“We don’t know yet.” Raleigh answered truthfully. “He’s... well, freaked is one way to put it. But we’re trying.”  
  
“You are good to him Mr. Becket.” Maria said matter-of-fact. “For that, you have my thanks.”  
  
“It’s no trouble, really.” He protested, guilt turning his stomach. “He means a lot to everyone around here. He means a lot to me.”  
  
Raleigh closed his eyes. “I love him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is the last of the story that I've posted on LJ. New chapters will be uploaded soon!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!
> 
> In this chapter, we get some of Chuck's thoughts thrown in.

Once he said it, he couldn’t unsay it. He just couldn’t say it enough.

Chuck snorted when he whispered it to his skin, his stubble a rasp against the taut column of his neck. As though he could somehow tattoo the words against the damp and disfigured chest like the kill count on his drivesuit, replace it with reassurances of love.

The younger man stretched languid beneath his palms, obviously pleased at the attention. He hitched his knees higher above his waist until he was almost squeezing his ribs, a hand raised to cup his face. Raleigh leaned into it, sucking on the salty fingertips. Chuck came with a soft groan, his cock emptying itself between them.

“What’s wrong?” Chuck asked, gold strands sweeping across his freckled cheeks as he pulled out. Raleigh deftly tied off the condom and tossed it in a corner where it fell in a bin. Chuck whooped with enthusiasm and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his sternum, biting into his scars. It stung and in retaliation, Raleigh pinned him down, rubbing their noses together.

“Nothing” He breathed, in between laughter. “I’m so happy.”

 

On the ninth day of her self-imposed crusade against her copilot’s designs upon Chuck’s supposed virtue, Mako’s anger had cooled into edged pity, a shade resembling the coming dawn. Like a stag harried through the night, he seized the chance when he saw it—it was he thought, he felt, safe enough he could approach her without getting his head knocked off his shoulders with a bo.

“You still mad at me?” Raleigh asked, affecting nonchalance.

Mako flayed him with her eyes, dark brown and shot through with copper.

“Yes” she said curtly, turning one heel, economic in her movements as though a wasted breath could mean the difference between life and death. Until several months ago, it had been. Now they would carry their habit throughout their lives.

The two yellow bars across her epaulettes shone with newness under the overhead lights. Following her brisk footsteps, Raleigh muttered “at least you’re talking to me now. Will you please hear me out?”

“No”

He took that to mean yes. They had not been drift-compatible for nothing.

“I won’t tell him.”

Mako nodded.

“Then we are done here.”

Raleigh didn’t grab her even though he wanted to. He slid his hands deep in his pockets, hunching his shoulders forward. “Why is it so bad I don’t tell him?” He asked though he already knew her answer. “What if he doesn’t remember?”

When still she said nothing, Raleigh said shortly “I can’t. Tell him.”

Mako grabbed him by the collar and twisted, dragging him forward. “You are a coward Raleigh Becket.” She scolded fiercely. He held still, his throat bobbing against the tip of her thumb. “Chuck was unkind to you, that is true. We often are to those whom we do not trust.” The Japanese pilot composed herself with visible effort, nostrils flaring a delicate pink. “But he trusted you to have his back. To fight with him not against.”

Her shoulders sagged and she said bleakly, “He may never remember. I may never know what sensei thought of me in his last moments. “If you cannot tell him, I will. But Chasu-kun deserves to hear it from you.”

Chastened, Raleigh asked “What about me? Don’t I deserve anything?”

Mako shook her head.

“Not like this.”

 

It was warm enough to forego the sweater, anything long-sleeved. Living in Anchorage for five years had shot through any residual tolerance for heat but Chuck thrived in it, refusing to get out of bed for anything less than a crisp, seventy-five degrees.

Raleigh rolled his eyes at the theatrics and stuck his cold hands in the warm cocoon. Chuck swore and tumbled off the bed, landing on the carpet with a disgruntled scowl. He groped for a pillow, anything to throw at him. Finding nothing, he leaned back with a sigh, hopefully enjoying the view.

“I think I remembered something today.” He mumbled, grabbing his foot.

Raleigh swallowed and kneeled. He reached out and brushed the fringe of red-blond hair from his forehead. “Yeah?”

“Hmmm” Chuck replied, closing his eyes.

“Chuck, what did you see?”

 

It was, perhaps, a question of what he didn’t see. What he didn’t hear.

Everything he remembered was something out of a storybook, words remembered as pictures, subtle details forgotten.

It was like drawing clouds above the blue sky because that was what he expected. Waves in the water because that was what anyone expected. There was a time in his life the beach wasn’t such a scary place, back when Kaiju were something out of H.P. Lovecraft and water was safe to touch.

Charlie remembered nothing.

Raleigh wasn’t there.

And his brain latched on, gnawed on it like a dog with a bone. It refused to let go. There was something he was missing. Something vital, important, something that shot a pang of regret through his chest when he remembered, a needle stitching a new heart for his new identity.

 _Why can’t I remember_ he asked himself though Dr. Walker had explained it a million times already. But he would listen to the man talk a million times more if it helped him understand why this was happening.

He stared at Raleigh, squinting up at the fluorescent bulb.

In place of blond hair, he saw red. The blue eyes were wrong; they should have been a paler color.

He sat up shaken.

Just who the hell was he seeing?

Who was he struggling to remember?

A hand landed on his cheek.

“Hey, you okay?”

Unable to talk, Charlie nodded.

“Oookay” Raleigh breathed, helping him to his feet. “Here we go. Walker wants to pick at your brains today.”

“Again?” He asked weakly. “What’s there to see?”

The older man looked troubled by the question.

“Chuck... don’t you want to get better?”

He was, Charlie decided, better. In the beginning, he could barely feed himself. His bandage had to be changed by the hour, drawing curious and horrified gazes whenever his burns, peeling and oozing, met the open air.

Charlie’s memories, the thing everyone so desperately sought, were gone. What happened if he got them back? He didn’t know Chuck Hansen. Based on what he knew, he seemed like a right arsehole. Were they even the same person? Would one of them cease to exist once he remembered?

Would Raleigh even want him any more if he failed?

Max

—a name bubbled to the forefront of his mind.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask. But with Raleigh determinedly dragging him to the medical ward, Charlie decided to keep it to himself. At least for a little while.

What could it hurt?

After all, he didn’t know anything.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!

Charlie often found himself writing long letters to his adoptive family because he liked the feel of cardstock under his fingertips and thought that the kids might get a kick out of touching real paper. For every dozen or so pages he sent, there was always an envelope waiting for him at the end of the month, signed by hasty scrawls and cramped fonts, dark ovals framing the edge where colorful stamps predominated.

In the wake of his miraculous resurrection, he received fanmail as well, all carefully screened by manager who’d sprung fully-formed from a group of would-be Rangers obsolete in the new era. Some of them had been well-wishers praying for speedy recovery, others thanks for saving the world. There were marriage proposals, panties and thongs stuffed inside as well as some of the more dangerous elements of being a celebrity post K-Day.

Raleigh had nearly had a heart attack when he received a pipe-bomb in the mail.

The back of his head tingled as though he had forgotten something. Charlie stopped writing, spun in his chair, mind furiously trying to work out what it was that he forgot. It could be something as innocuous as a stray thought of dessert or urgent like his things being left around. He had his phone; he had a beeper attached to his waist which he suspected more than just simple messages. So what was it that he couldn’t remember?

It was only three, hardly a time to gather for lunch or dinner.

An appointment? He wasn’t due for counseling or physical therapy until next morning, Dr. Walker’s inspection even further away.

In front of a mirror, he stuck out his tongue which was slightly pitted across the middle where he’d bit down hard. He didn’t remember what happened. That was the point. He was glad he didn’t remember but didn’t like the idea that he might have forgotten something important.

Charlie looked at the tablet in his hand, pushing images and galleries into the background as he tapped on a web browser. _The connection is shitty_ —he had thought though it had been the first time in living memory he’d held a tablet. At a loss as to what to do, he’d obediently clicked on a link as directed.

But it was not what he was looking for. He skipped backwards in time, a day, a week, a month, a year, the great restoration, Operation Pitfall, closing of the Sydney Shatterdome, nothing. He couldn’t find Raleigh.

Sydney’s jaegers protected the southern hemisphere, Gipsy Danger the north and after her decommissioning, Raleigh retired.

According to his profile, Chuck had clocked over five thousand hours’ worth of sims leading up to their inevitable meeting in Hong Kong. But it was hard to believe that they struck it up right away within the handful of days with the resistance. Chuck Hansen was rude, abrasive, a PR nightmare as far as the PPDC was concerned.

Surprisingly, he featured in very few interviews, never ones away from major news channels, never without a babysitter to read him the riot act. There was nothing personal about his life, nothing concrete, speculations remained just a speculation. Charlie scowled at the smirking face of the man on the screen. Even in death, Chuck Hansen was managing to be a complete arse.

 _Were you proud of me dad?_ He’d finally put a name to the steely-eyed man with a dog trotting at his heels. He read about the drift, fact, fiction, everything in between and wondered how a person could survive against a bond profound. His respect for Raleigh grew. As they laid together in bed the older man told him, “Your dad’s in a bad place right now. I... I knew what happened to Yance. I was with him till the end but you...”

Stacker Pentecost had been a dying man. Chuck Hansen was twenty-one and just learning what it was like to _live_.

“I feel sorry for him.” Charlie concluded in his letter. “But I’m proud of the decisions he made.”

He rubbed his face, head aching as he put away the stationary.

Charlie had pills, a great many of them. The navy had given him pills before he ran out by the months end and had to endure the pain alone on nothing but aspirin and distilled spirits. He now had vitamins, pain killers, muscle relaxants and a colorful assortment of other things that helped his body function. His body was fine, he was fine.

“It feels like they’re hiding something from me.”

Dr. Pike, one of his many therapists, nodded in sympathy.

“It must be hard for you.”

He shrugged helplessly. “I trust them.”

_Right?_

At night he lay tucked against Raleigh’s side, wondering where the thick warmth of Max’s doggy weight was or whether his old man had gone, too ashamed to stick around or even say hi once he resurfaced. Raleigh slept on with his knuckles cool against the small of his back. Uneasy, he closed his eyes. He didn’t get to sleep until around four in the morning.

 

Goldberg was happy with the results. He was the only one.

When Raleigh tentatively brought up the issue of Chuck’s amnesia, the Marshal’s lips went flat with disapproval. Beside him, Mako vibrated with tension, her nails digging into her clipboard as though she was biting her tongue. The Japanese pilot had become more confident and assertive of her own opinions after Operation Pitfall. She was safe in knowing that her father loved her and approved of her. But she had also grown up living in his shadow, learning the fine art of political diplomacy and plain bullshitting. Mako subsided, shooting him a pointed look. He flinched.

Thankfully, Rachel Paoletti of the public relations department smoothly transitioned the focus of their conversation to the matter at hand. The people wanted to know more about the prodigal son. The clips and sound bites they used as lures were no longer enough.

“Can he do it?” Goldberg asked bluntly, directing his question to Dr. Pike who looked like a deer caught in headlights.

“Yes” she dragged out, tapping her pen against the table. At the Marshal’s fierce look, she immediately stopped. “He won’t like it. Mr. Hansen is an intelligent young man. He dislikes not knowing.”

“He’s a soldier.” Goldberg replied. “He’s going to have to suck it up.”

 

The interview was over and if Chuck tried any harder to get off the stage, he would have broken the sound barrier.

“You did good.” Raleigh said, kissing the younger man on the forehead.

Chuck blinked up at him owlishly and rubbed his face. “I don’t know half the shite I was saying and I’m sure you bastards are making some of it up.” He accused, his features pinched.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He promised and he didn’t. When did Goldberg have the time to splice their heads together on very compromising photos? Twenty twenty-five wasn’t exactly the model example for tolerance.  

He also had no idea what soda bread was.

His stomach grew taut. He was going to end up giving himself ulcers.

Raleigh took him by the mouth and hooked his thumbs in the belt loops around his waist. Annoyed, Chuck growled. He pushed back, lips filthy and bruising as he flipped the bird to some of the catcalls and whistles from around the studio. There was something dangerous in his eyes that sent blood rushing to his cock and not his brain. Closing his teeth around his ear Chuck rasped “your room or mine?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for the long wait! Thanks for the patience of sticking with me so far!

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth—Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, whatever.

Chuck fiddled with his phone like it was a good luck charm, just turning it over and over in his palms until the seams were rubbed smooth and his hand felt raw like pulled taffy.

One of the j-techs had found it in the cafeteria and brought it to him. He’d spent the rest of the night apologizing to Raleigh after, going over every inch of his body with mouth and his tongue, learning new things, sweet spots and tells the older man hadn’t even know about before the sun broke across the horizon like an egg on a hot pan, bright and orange and itching at the back of his mind like he’d forgotten something again.

He’d spent his entire conscious life, what he could remember, next to the shore, allowing the beat of the waves on pale sand to carry him off to sleep. But when he looked out the window at the harbor filled with boats and containers ready for sail, he only felt dread.

People had died here he knew. Good men and women, people who knew him, friends, family. He couldn’t remember any of them. And God help him, he didn’t have the courage to ask.

When it came down to it, he didn’t want to _know_. There was a sense of wrongness within him, something born from being a soldier, a ranger, a pilot. A small part of him, wiser than all of his years, knew better than to let the matter rest. Better lance the wound before it festered and soured his blood. That one was from his father, maybe, both of them. He didn’t know, he had a headache and he wasn’t sure if reaching for the bottle would make it better or worse.

Did he drink? No one told him anything. The bigger part of him, the one that was all but eleven, the part that was tired of being hurt, disappointed, want to crawl away into a corner and hunker down until it was all over.

Guam had storms that were beautiful but deadly in their intensity, typhoons that threatened to rip out palms and blow the roof off their homes. And he was caught in the middle, awed and afraid.

He ran.

 

Raleigh didn’t think much of it at first.

Correction, he didn’t want to think about it.

What had started as a bit of kindness had turned into a full-scale deception. He was afraid of what might happen next, what Goldberg would say, the dimples in Chuck’s smile, and Mako’s impatience to tell the younger man if he could not and would not himself.

It felt as though he was holding a ticking time bomb to his chest. Days flew by too quickly in the Hong Kong Shatterdome. His salvation had turned into a cage. There was never the right time, the right place or the privacy. He now knew that Goldberg had planted a bug inside Chuck’s phone the day it disappeared. Raleigh didn’t know how he knew but how else could the Marshal have been tracking their every move, their thoughts and decisions?

It was a different world now.

Stricken, Raleigh tried to dispose of the phone when Chuck wasn’t looking. Rolled it up in a towel and dumped it in the laundry chute. A replacement had been sent maybe an hour or two after, appearing innocuously on a bedside table as though to berate him—we’re watching, we’re always watching. He stayed in Hong Kong because it was what he knew. Chuck was there, Mako was there. If he could have, he would have taken them both and left them in a heartbeat.

When Goldberg called to tell him that Chuck was outside, waiting on a cab that would take him to Guam, all he felt was relief. Maybe if Chuck, as damaged as he was and hurting, could find the courage to seek out what he could not understand, Raleigh could do it too. And maybe Mako could go back to Tokyo and reopen the Shatterdome, build it in her father’s image and hers instead of Goldberg’s grand design.

But Raleigh was a Ranger first. He wished that he could have said Chuck but he wasn’t. Not when he lied his tongue black every night as they lay side by side, talking about a future which could never be.

It was funny. He’d been alright when it was just him and Chuck, no one else.

Raleigh should have never let it get this far.

Chuck looked up wide-eyed at being caught with his hand on the door of a cab. Raleigh dismissed his expression with a smile and a kiss, hauling him close by the collar and slipping a hand in the younger man’s pocket. Distracted, Chuck never noticed the theft of his phone. He pulled away when he heard the telltale crunch under Raleigh’s heels.

“What the fuck...” Chuck stared from the broken bits of plastic to him and back. A blush starting low behind his ears, he said “I would have told you.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.” The younger man stressed, ducking his head like he was in the wrong. “I just... I just have to get away for a while.”

“It’s fine.” And it was. Raleigh finally felt like he had done something right instead of everything that earned Mako’s contempt and more.

Chuck looked up. “Stop saying that! It’s not fine. I should have told you!”

“No” The younger man hitched his breath. To the onlookers, it would have seemed like well wishes for a long journey. Heart rattling in his chest, it was anything but. “Whatever you do, don’t come back.”

“What? Why?” Chuck tried to struggle free from Raleigh’s grip. “Are you breaking up with me?” He searched his face for answers but there was none to be had. None that Chuck didn’t deserve to hear from his own lips. “I’m sorry, it was just a stupid idea—”

“No, Chuck, no.” Raleigh choked because the stupid idea was all his. He couldn’t believe how low he had brought the ex-Ranger down and sorry that he ever thought of it, that he could keep some part of Chuck, the part that wasn’t half-defensive, angry and righteous for himself. Herc’s wrath seemed like a fair punishment at that moment and he buried his face in the lapels of Chuck’s coat, not nearly thick enough for his poor Aussie soul, for one last time. “I won’t but you will.”

“Beg yours mate? Why the fuck would I do that?”

And Raleigh looked at him straight in the eyes and told him, “Because I lied. You and me were never together.”


	9. Chapter 9

It wasn’t hard. The thing was, it wasn’t _hard_. It was as though they’d expected him to come back like a dog after a good run in the fields, in time for supper or a wooden spoon on the food bowl. After a quick call to Maria and Joon, he packed his meds, the painkillers, not the shit that made him sleepy. There wasn’t much physical therapy could do for his wounds and he sure didn’t care about plastic surgery.  The burns were a proof that he was alive, that the pilot named Chuck Hansen wasn’t gone, just a little lost.

The world slowed to a crawl before speeding back up again. He wasn’t sure that he had heard whatever that had just come out of Raleigh’s mouth, he _couldn’t_. His breathing came fast, his heart thundering against his ears like the churning waves.

“I don’t understand.” He stammered, his bag falling from his nerveless fingers. It hit the ground, landing in a puddle. Raleigh leaned forward to pick the bag up and handed it back to him. He shook his head though his arms shot forward to receive it. “I... fuck, what? I can’t...” He ground the heel of his palm against his eye, trying to squeeze out the vestiges of panicked tears before Raleigh could get a glimpse of him. “No, no, no, you just... it’s alright mate. I won’t...” Setting his lips in a stubborn line, he declared “You’re lying.”

Raleigh’s eyes were the color of the sky, pale, blue, and painful to stare at for too long. He had never realized how uncomfortable it was to be caught in the glare. The Raleigh he had known had been on the shy side, his eyes wandering to everywhere but his face as though marveling at his miraculous recovery. But that too was a lie.

“ _Why_?”

There was a jumbled expression about Goldberg, the UN and the future of PPDC. But a ragged hole had already been torn inside his chest, a gaping chasm threatening to consume everything within. His lungs sucked in air as though it had been punctured, deflated, with air seeping out through the space between his ribs. Chuck stumbled, leaning against the cab where the weary driver looked at them both with blood-shot eyes.

Raleigh reached out. He instinctively slapped the offending hand away.

“All this time, you?”

“I’m _sorry_.”

Chuck didn’t hear it. He couldn’t unhear it. He shivered. He felt cold.

“Why now?” he rasped. “Why didn’t you...?”

The other man finished his sentence for him.

“I couldn’t tell you earlier because I didn’t know what to say. You just assumed...”

“You should have told me.” Chuck interrupted and Raleigh bowed his head.

“I know that now and I’m sorry...”

“Why now?”

Raleigh was silent for a long time. The cabbie honked his horn in impatience and Chuck turned to leave. He hadn’t been sure when he would be back and now he knew that he never would. Hong Kong Shatterdome was just a series of disappointments and heartbreak. Chuck wondered what the other Chuck would have made of all this. Despite his arrogance, he seemed like a smart bloke. Street-wise and world-weary, he would have never been suckered into a stunt like this.

A stunt, his brief life had been a PR stunt.

“We’re done here.”

 

“I love you.” Raleigh said finally.

The crunch of cartilage and bone wasn’t really a surprise.

“Fuck you!” Chuck roared, looking manic at the confession as he struggled to regain his bearings. “That’s supposed to make it all better then? That you love me?!!”

“Chuck...” He said helplessly, holding his hands up as the taste of copper flooded his mouth. “I meant to tell you...”

“Why didn’t you, you bastard?! Did you think it was funny?!! Having a bit of lark?!”

Raleigh caught the next fist and held it between them. It wasn’t hard. Chuck was not the strapping twenty-one-year-old who had gone down with the ship. This Chuck was hurt and Raleigh had just made it worse.

After moments of trying to struggle free, Chuck slumped against the side of the taxi and said in a low voice. “Let go.”

“Chuck...”

“You said we were never together and we’re not, so let go.”

His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. He swore, “That’s not what I fucking...”

“Well what the fuck did you think would happen?” Chuck said coldly. “Because you haven’t given me a lot of choices mate.”

This was somehow better and worse than he imagined. The truth was out. He no longer had to bear the shame of it. But Chuck’s eyes had shuttered closed, like storm blinds braced for the winds. He had half-imagined that Chuck’s anger would be like putting a lid on an erupting volcano, hot, unpredictable, reassuring in its tempestuous heat. But in reality, Chuck ran cold as though the effort of maintaining such façade had burned him inside out.

Raleigh let out a breath. Slowly, he relaxed his grip.

Chuck blinked in surprise before looking away. As he got in the taxi, Raleigh blurted out “If you ever need anything...”

“I won’t.” Chuck cut him off. Appraising him with cool eyes, he added with a twist of his lips “good luck.”

 

To say that Goldberg was less than pleased would have been like saying that the polar ice caps were a little cold, the ocean a little wet, the sun a little bright. Goldberg’s fury could have given the sun a run for its money. The Marshal of the newly-instated PPDC exploded loudly and colorfully. Raleigh had not been lambasted so soundly since the pregnancy scare during Yamarashi whence he had sworn off taking twins to bed.

The walls shook and the metal echoed with Goldberg’s outburst, his spittle hitting their mark well below his face and across his throat as though the squat man was planning to pin a target on him. But the damage had been done and the public relations department was in a mad dash to spinning the situation to less than its apocalyptic levels. The media’s favorite couple split up? Who dumped who? Was there a new man or a woman in their lives?

Raleigh tried to be practical, tried to put his mind off.

“Chuck’s been gone for less than twelve hours.”

Mako shrugged and handed him a cup of coffee to tide him over. It tasted foul like someone had taken a dump in it and forgot to flush. But at the moment, Raleigh felt that it wasn’t anything he didn’t deserve and slurped noisily in approval. Mako shot him an impressive raise of her eyebrows as though she was about to comment but couldn’t quite do it.

In the end, she settled for “You did the right thing?”

“Did I?” He asked nasally, his nose in a splint. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

The Japanese ranger looked unhappy as though this was not at all like how she had envisioned it to be. “Chuck is stubborn.” She admitted, “But he forgives easily.”

“You think so?”

Mako sighed.

“He will hang on to his anger. However, I believe he understands.”

“I wish you had your confidence Mako.” He confided. “I really do. Because I...” He swallowed a sob, the events of the past day crashing down on him.

Ever efficient, Mako pulled the mug away from his hands and sat down beside him, wrapping an arm around his slumped shoulders. “ _Daijoubudesuka_?”

“My timing is shit.” He laughed, voice torn with a hysteric edge. “I love him.” And Mako made a soothing noise, rubbing his arms up and down. “Turns out I love him after all.”

 

The entire world was in an uproar. Phones were ringing off the hook. The entire Shatterdome was in a lockdown, wary of visitors who graced their halls. Access to Raleigh was entirely limited which was fortunate because he had been holed up in his room for the three days Chuck had been gone and only by the strength of Mako’s indomitable will and Tendo’s help in dumping him in the showers broke him from his fugue.

Tendo sat on the toilet as he splashed around in the stall, fully clothed, looking just about as uncomfortable as he was miserable and mentioned, “Maybe you should take off for a bit. The change of scenery might do you good.” Slowly, as though pivoting on a rusty hinge, Raleigh’s head turned.

“Where would I go?”

Tendo shrugged.

“Wherever the winds take you. You might want to keep your head down for a bit, the media’s out for blood, but who knows, it might help you with getting some tail.”

Raleigh’s throat bobbed.

“I don’t want...”

“Hey, hey” Tendo soothed, standing up in alarm. “It was just a suggestion.”

He turned off the shower which was already cold and layered several towels on his shoulders.

“You really liked the kid didn’t you?” Tendo asked sympathetically, wincing at the blue trim of his lips.

“I don’t know what’s worse.” Raleigh shivered, teeth shattering. “That I told him or I could have kept...”

“It would have been a lie.” Tendo said gently.

“I keep thinking you know.” He said, tuning the older man out. “I keep thinking that maybe if I had waited just a little longer...”

“Trust me. It would have been worse.”

“I fucked up.” Raleigh grieved.

“We all did.” Tendo replied. “Martyrdom’s never suited you Becket-boy.”

 

Raleigh gave it two more days, three, a week before going after Chuck. No one tried to stop him, they were too busy trying to figure out who was leaking the information. But Tendo gave him a wink and Mako stuffed his pockets with as much money, love, support and farewell as she could.

“We expect full reports every day Ranger Becket.” She said fiercely and he loved her for it. Mako was just as guilty for the way things turned out and for that, she didn’t stop him. “Tokyo Shatterdome will be open soon.” She invited. “I will see you at the ceremony.”

“Of course.”

He found a plane to Guam, hopped from one island to another until he finally reached his destination in the ocean blue. Raleigh arrived without fanfare, officers greeted him with smart salutes and suspicious eyes, as though they weren’t sure he wasn’t about to boot them off to a weather station on the Falkland Islands or something.

During his absence, the naval base had expanded to house the island’s growing population. He could see the effects of running water, electricity, and shelter immediately among children who were just as dirty-faced but seemed healthy and better-fed.

Soon after his arrival, Mariah came to speak with him. Joon was nowhere to be found.

“Chuck is gone.” She greeted.

“I figured.”

“I was told it was a mutual split.” The woman looked him over critically, pursing her lips at the days old stubble and the bags under his eyes. “I see that was not the case.”

“It was mutual.” He replied, haggard. “Just... it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“We have time.” Maria decided. “Uncomplicate it.”

 

Raleigh spent the next day experiencing things he should have the last time he was on Guam, the time he had been so excited to find the lost Ranger that he didn’t think. Not thinking was what got him here in the first place and he began to retrace his footsteps from the moment Chuck was spat out on the sand like Venus surfing her way ashore.

The outpost had medical records, scant as Chuck was not a naval personnel but here was a file. He combed the tides as he thought the question over, Maria being as helpful as sand between his toes. If her partner Joon knew Chuck’s whereabouts, they weren’t sharing. He was glad. It gave him time to think.

Where could Chuck be?

This island and its people were all that he knew, all that he should know.

He couldn’t have gone back to Hong Kong. Raleigh would have known. Mako would have called him by now with or without Goldberg’s permission.

Raleigh mentally dissected Chuck’s behavior over the past several weeks and found a glaring inconsistency. Chuck’s dependence on the phone, as though he was waiting for the single call that would his set his memories free. He hadn’t understood why that was. The doctor had called it an amnesia. Whatever pieces of his former self remained, it shouldn’t have attached itself to a burner phone.

Unless he remembered.

There were episodes when Chuck the pilot, the child-soldier, the Ranger, resurfaced like a breaching whale as powerful and inexorable. He had no idea what triggered those, only that Chuck always made an effort to remember the damned dog. Wouldn’t look twice at his photos or the heydays of PPDC but the dog, Max.

Max was with Herc.

No one knew where Herc was.

But even after the drift ended, pilots were connected. They could feel the general shape of each other’s mind, finished each other’s sentence without a second thought, could somehow sense each other’s location as though some sort of a homing beacon had been placed between their ears. Chuck and Herc had been one of the longest serving pilots on record. If a ghost drift could last just as long, it would have been between them.

On his last day in Guam, Joon trudged up to him with a familiar bag, the sports bag Chuck carried his world’s possessions in. “Here,” the woman said brusquely, shoving it in his arms. “Fuck this up and I will can your ass.” At the warning tone in her partner’s voice she said in a grudging tone. “Do it properly this time.”

“I will.” He hugged her quickly and jogged off.

“And call!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearly at the end, oh boys....


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I lied. There is one more chapter after this.
> 
> Guilt and recriminations ahoy!

Raleigh drove Gipsy alone for fifteen hours until he hit shore. During which he could have sworn he felt Yancy right there next to him just out of sight as though his brother’s physical form had been shed and it was his soul tethered to him from the other side, unable to penetrate as though trapped against a thick sheet of glass.

The last person to drift with Chuck Hansen was Marshal Stacker Pentecost. A dead man paired with the living. It took them the entire descent for their link to stabilize, by which time Chuck was brittle like a dried sea star. In the end it hadn’t mattered. Their handshake broke off as soon as it had been made, at the collective horror of Slattern’s appearance.

Ghost drift was what Chuck had been feeling. An indelible mark left on the psyche even after Striker Eureka stripped him of what he used to be.

It was a rare phenomenon but not unheard of. Six years in the harness together and Raleigh was surprised Herc hadn’t simply charged in demanding to see his son. But he had felt the ghost drift himself and knew how it could drive someone completely insane. Herc probably thought he was going crazy, the miracle of his son’s revival notwithstanding.

Briefly, Raleigh leaned his head against the window and wondered if that was what drove the Australian pilot away. The overwhelming sense of failure and the fact that his copilot beckoned just out of reach.

As he disembarked, he concentrated on the thought that Chuck was alive. Alive meant that Chuck could be found, touched and tangible. His jaw throbbed. A stewardess watched him with a frown, as though her brain couldn’t quite connect what she was seeing. He returned her interest with a polite smile, frozen when a hand slipped into his pockets with a number.

He threw the napkin away immediately even though it didn’t mean anything—couldn’t mean anything. When he woke up, it all started when he woke up and Yancy was dead and his search was looking more like a trip down the memory lane rather than an epic apology.

Memories overlapped, the first place he’d gone to was their room. Yancy wasn’t coming back and neither was Chuck, he just wanted to be close to one of them or both. He knew what Chuck was after and not for the first time, he wondered if what he was doing was right. If he shouldn’t just let Chuck be. But he could never forgive himself if Chuck disappeared just like Herc, not to be heard from again. At any rate, he hadn’t forgiven himself for the massive fuckup the first time around even if a part of him reasoned not all of it was his fault.

Raleigh didn’t know what Chuck knew, if he knew anything at all. But surely Herc was alive somewhere spoiling Max to pieces.

He didn’t know what Herc knew but nonetheless Raleigh hoped to god he would find Chuck before Herc did.

With a bark of laughter he realized there would be no force on Earth that could save his bacon otherwise.

.

Since the days of Multavore and Operation Pitfall, the Sydney Shatterdome had been largely left abandoned. However that did not deter the weekend crowd who were determined to see the sights before the government tore the ghastly eyesore down. Even to Raleigh who had worked a better part of backbreaking five years on top of a useless wall thought it was ugly, a stark contrast to the white-domed opera house in the horizon.

“Becket” Said a smooth voice, accompanied by a hand which squeezed his bum shoulder. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Scott Hansen wasn’t someone you forgot easily.

Popular, sociable and extremely photogenic, he had been the face of Sydney Shatterdome in their heyday. Until the fuckup in Manila seven years ago he was someone everyone wished they could be. Raleigh remembered that the man had been dishonorably discharged. Rumors ranged from rape of a minor to an outright murder. Nothing flattering.

He mostly remembered the tremors inside their exclusive pool when Herc reported his own copilot, his own flesh and blood for the sake of duty.

“I didn’t know you still worked here.” He said lamely.

“I don’t” Hansen shrugged. “People have memories like a bloody elephant’s. But then again, my face is not the one on every channel.” The man gave him a long look, his red hair glowing like a blaze of fire. “Nervous Becket?” He asked, his face morphing into a wolfish grin—like Chuck when he was about to start something, like Herc when he was about to end it.

“Should I be?”

“I think you have more reason than most.”

Raleigh opened his mouth.

Hansen cut him off.

“Convince me why I shouldn’t let the vultures have at you.”

“Chuck told you.”

“He didn’t have to. I’ve known that kid my entire life.”

“Then why didn’t you come?” Raleigh bit off. “Why did you leave him alone knowing that I was a lie?”

Hansen cocked his head.

“It sounds to me like you’re pointing fingers where you shouldn’t mate.

“I didn’t come because I thought it was a lie—wouldn’t be the first time PPDC’s pulled something like this. By the time I figured out what happened, Goldberg wouldn’t let me near his precious Shatterdome. It was my word against his. Who would you believe? A Marshall or some washed out jockey?”

Staring into Raleigh’s eyes, Hansen challenged “Are you surprised?”

“Why would PPDC lie?” Raleigh demanded. But with a sinking feeling, he realized he already knew why.

“We started losing. The PPDC couldn’t afford any more bad press. How many pilots do you think would have signed up if they knew their jaegers were poisoning them? I got sick. Herc thought he was doing the right thing.”

He swallowed reflexively.

“I didn’t... it wasn’t like that”

“Wasn’t it? Pull the other one Becket, it’s got bells on.”

“Is he okay?” Raleigh tried desperately.

“Once he gets a bit of sunshine in him, why not?”

Raleigh sagged. “I need to talk to him.”

“So does a lot of people.” Hansen said, unimpressed.

He felt sick.

“Could you give him a message at least? From me?”

Hansen started to shrug but seemed to change his mind. He lifted his lips into a smile, teeth like shards of pearls inside his mouth.

“Tell you what mate, I’ll do you one better. I’ll take you to where Chuck is and he can decide for himself whether he wants to hear what you have to say or not.”

“Why are you helping me?” Raleigh asked warily.

“Mostly? I want to see my darling brother punch you in your face when he figures out you’ve deflowered my nephew.”

“I’ll be fine.” He said firmly.

Hansen seemed pleased.

Darkly, he warned “Good then listen up. Herc is a decent sort; I’m not. I'm already the black sheep of this family. You try anything and I drop you like a sack of kaiju shit got it?”

It wasn't hard to see the resemblance.

He was starting to wonder what Herc was like when he was pissed.

Raleigh gritted his teeth.

“Crystal”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is getting ridiculous. This was going to be the last chapter but I think the Hansens deserved their grand reunion and I was never great at math. I mean, what the hell is x in conjunction to y and what are all those tiny numbers???? 
> 
> But you know. Only epilogue is left so I think this counts? Maybe?
> 
> I'm soorrrrrrrrrrry.
> 
> Free cake to anyone that's with me so far.

Chuck was numb throughout the entire car ride. What was he supposed to think? Raleigh lied to him and he berated himself for thinking that it could have been real. Worst of all, he hadn’t noticed it sooner. Why didn’t he think, no that can’t be right? Raleigh came for him and he had just assumed—how embarrassing. For God’s sake, why didn’t anyone tell him?

He felt sick. What the fuck was he doing? He had to go back. No one else had come for him. Not Mako, not Tendo who’d stared at him strangely at the sound of his name, not even this mythical father of his who occupied every space in his head.

The cabbie eyed him warily through the mirror wondering if he had to ask for an extra fifty for cleanup.

Maria, Joon, Guam, paradise—he had to go there now.

 

As he boarded the plane, he looked back one last time to see if Raleigh was coming. It scared him badly how easy it was, how easy it was to go, to leave. Maybe PPDC knew the same thing he did. He wasn’t Chuck Hansen, he was just somebody people wished he was.

Joon knew immediately what was up, even before he opened his mouth. She took his bag despite his protests, swinging it so wildly that he feared she might cark someone with it. The normally jovial woman shook with barely repressed fury as people scattered left and right from her path. Chuck swallowed thinking that maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.

“The nerve of him!” She snarled, thrusting his bag in Maria’s capable hands.

“I’m sure there’s an explanation.” The other woman intoned, more out of obligation than anything else.

“Are you taking his side?” Joon said snippily, “because disagreeing with me is taking his side and that is not what Charlie needs right now.”

“Charlie is right here.” Chuck groused.

“Or course you are darling.” She soothed. “Come, sit. You must be exhausted.”

He was tried though he wasn’t about to admit as such. But he let himself to be led to his old bedroom, fearing repercussions if he failed to comply. The wind blew softly through the walls. A wind full of rain, a wind of promise, a wind bringing a storm.

“I’m not staying long.” He said as Maria checked his side, a small noise of approval at the wrinkled pink flesh. “I can’t.”

She stopped him before he could explain why.

“You’ll do what you must Charles.”

 

The next day was stormy with clouds thundering overhead. Water sluices down his face making it hard to see. Joon stared at the plane hired to fly him to Sydney. Even Maria seemed dubious though she did not voice her doubts out loud.

“Are you sure you can’t stay one day?” She said diplomatically.

“Our bathtub is bigger.” Said Joon unhelpfully.

Chuck rolled his eyes, feeling his lips twitch in spite of himself.

“You don’t have a bathtub.”

“Exactly.”

“Is there anything you’d like us to say if Mr. Becket comes calling?”

Fear ratcheted up his spine like the name was an oath, an ancient prayer to evoke the gods. Unconscious to his thoughts, Joon hissed, pushing at her partner’s shoulder. Once, he’d been able to watch them with affection. Now their familiarity seemed like a vice around his throat.

“I don’t know.” He admitted. “Maybe that I’m sorry.” He said. At this, Maria’s expression turned stony. “That we couldn’t be what we wanted each other to be.”

 

Several stops and thirteen hours later he was in Queensland, Australia. The city of Cairns wasn’t like anything he expected. His personal bio claimed that he’d spent two years there between the ages of three to five. It didn’t feel like home. He didn’t know its sun, the air or the land.

At once, he missed Guam with its light warmth and salty breeze. Australia was like island nation multiplied, everything was too much,

The TSA agent scrutinized him with a sharp eye as he waved him through the gates.

Recognition settling in his features, he asked “Hey aren’t you that...”

Chuck grinned like a shark.

“I get that a lot.”

 

He didn’t go to Sydney immediately; he bought a bike off the streets and spent the rest of the day exploring the city. Jetlagged, he finally decided to crash on a bench next to the beach. The dunes looked like a grenade went off as one by one, the city’s homeless settled themselves on the baked sand. The police weren’t too bothered by the bodies as long as they picked up after themselves. It wasn’t as though the Pacific Ocean was a popular destination these days.

Chuck woke up sneezing in the morning, chilled and his hand shaking as he tossed his daily ration of pills down the hatchet. He took his time, warming up before the heat got too much for him. Something told him to invest in a sunscreen he didn’t want cancer. He decided he liked the voice, gruff and older-sounding. It seemed to know what it was doing even if he didn’t.

 _Flying would be easier_ —the voice told him as he boosted a car.

He said out loud “where’s the fun in that?”

 

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Or not, he decided early on as he hit every tourist trap within twenty-kilometer radius. Despite being hit by two kaiju in the recent years, Sydney looked pretty solid. He stared down at the city from the tower eye, climbed the bridge while others heaved over the railings, even sat quiet listening to music on the monorail. But in the end, he was eventually drawn to the Sydney Shatterdome in clear view of the Sydney Opera House which rose like white sails over the horizon. Wrinkling his nose at the clear line of people, he snooped around to see if there was a way he could sneak in.

Big buildings like the Shatterdome were always like that, between maintenance crews or jaeger pilots having really bad days. He himself had been pulled out through side entrances many times after punching out a reporter, or three.

Chuck took a step back, suddenly disoriented.

A memory or something he’d seen?

He’d been dubbed a logistical nightmare as far as the PR department was concerned and weren’t they surprised to find a biddable kid replacing Chuck Hansen, one who’d actually smile at the cameras, one who would yap how high when told to jump.

“Jesus” He croaked.

“Oi, you’re not supposed to be up there!”

A pair of ground crew shook their hands at him from a level down. He flipped them the bird. A bad idea in hindsight as they began to climb after him.

Grinning like an idiot, he began to run, his bag clunking after him as he slid down endless stairs and ladders until he finally found himself below ground. There was a brief announcement about an intruder to turn himself in. Chuck scoffed at the warning and wandered deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Sydney Shatterdome.

He couldn’t shake the sense of familiarity as he turned right.

Most Shatterdomes shared the same layout. Although largely abandoned, it was clear that some parts of the building were still in use. He remembered that Shatterdomes were being recomissioned as a warning center for further activities in the Pacific. Maybe the world would take jaegers and pilots more seriously the next time around.

Midday, the hallways were empty. Chuck took his time half-heartedly trying doors and peeking in when they gave without resistance. But the one he was interested in was further down the hall, three doors from the end.

There was someone inside.

“Dad?”

 

But no. The man wasn’t his father. He was too young for one thing, sharper, like he never had an idiot kid to blunt the edges.

He started backwards, ready to run.

“Wait, kid, goddammit” the man cussed, hobbling forward to intercept.

This was wrong, everything was wrong. His heartbeat rocketed to a thousand beats per minute. Chuck didn’t want to hurt the man but he would if he had to. The stranger seemed to realize the facts and stopped. Holding his hands out in a universal gesture of peace, he said “I know where Herc is.”

How many people were named Herc? How many Australians?

How many times had they cursed the name until they realized it was a blessing in disguise?

“Who are you?”

The man looked at him in disbelief.

“Jesus, you really don’t remember then?”

“I don’t think” he explained with a touch of hysteria. “It’s fucking funny do you?”

“It’s fucking funny from where I’m standing.” The man said, scratching the back of his head. “Charlie” he drawled, “you look like shit.”

“’s what happens when you survive a nuclear blast. You might have noticed you know, if you watch the news.” He tried to come off as nonchalant. The man, whoever he was, didn’t owe him anything, probably. But he reminded him badly of his old man. He wanted him to be him.

“Easy there ace.” The man soothed, pulling him back from the door. “Want a sweet?”

“I’m not a kid Scott.”

And the thought crystalized with startling clarity.

He knew the man.

“Worth a shot.” Scott said genially, the corners of his eyes crinkling in delight. “Little shit. Welcome home.”

 

“I don’t understand.” Chuck said carefully as he picked at his plate of surf and turf. “Why didn’t you come for me?”

Scott stared in worry, once even reaching over to cop his forehead. He scowled and tried to stab his uncle’s hand for the stunt.

The man shrugged, fork hanging out the corner of his mouth.

“I thought Goldberg was having us on. You were dead. Or we thought you were.”

“We?”

“Me and Herc.” Scott shot him a sympathetic glance. “You’ve got to understand Charlie. Your death was hard on him.”

Chuck swallowed remembering what Raleigh told him about Yancy. He wondered where he was. If he’d... given up.

“When did you figure out that I was...”

“You?” Scott laughed. “Herc, the idiot, didn’t even want to think about it. And me, kid. Even if I wanted to, do you remember who I am?”

“You’re my uncle.” Chuck said hesitantly. “Aren’t you?”

“I am.” Scott said warmly. “I was also your daddy’s copilot.”

 

Memories leapt out at him in a messy jumble.

Chuck wasn’t sure he could call them memories, all blurred images stitched from what he’d seen from pictures and videos, secondhand accounts and wistful thinking. Not for the first time he wished he could turn back the clock, that he never tried to leave Hong Kong and well. He’d still be living a lie wouldn’t it?

He swallowed and tried to pretend the idea didn’t seem nearly as appealing as it was.

“Nervous?” Scott asked as he fiddled with the radio.

Chuck’s teeth rattled with every bump and hole in the road.

“I’m fine.” He gritted out, rubbing his palms against his trouser.

“Think of it as an early birthday present.”

“My birthday was weeks ago.”

Supposed to be anyway.

“Not you, you selfish twat.” Scott said, punching him in the arm. “For your father.”

A father who preferred him dead and buried.

He could see fucking kangaroos. Was his father living out every Australian stereotype?

“Oi” A hand wrapped around the back of his neck. “No worries, she’ll be apples.”

Knuckles white around his bag he asked “and if it’s not?”

 

Hercules Hansen lived in a house by the sea where Spinejackal once fell. The ground was still barren with weeds dotting the edge here and there, rocks dyed blue from its blood. But for all that the front yard was lush, a giant inflatable pool parked in the middle. The ocean was not visible from the house though it could be heard over the hill. It felt like Chuck had been here before.

His first thought was—where’s Max? Because he should have been there out to greet him. No matter how angry the bulldog was at him for being gone so long, he wouldn’t ignore him without a perfunctory sniff to make sure that it was really him and not someone else.

He bit back tears when he saw his dad lounging in the pool, a cold beer in one hand and the other in the water. As soon as they hopped out of the jeep, he gently propped the can against a chair and told them under no circumstances were they allowed on his property.

Scott rolled his eyes.

“Don’t be an ass Herc—” His uncle started to say when with an excited bark, a familiar face popped out from the bush.

“Max!” He immediately went to his knees, digging his fingers into the folds and wrinkles. Max promptly covered him in slobber and spit, leaving frantic paw prints across his knees. This more than anything told him that he was real, that he was in the right place. Whining, Max jumped to get a better shot at his face.

He heard the slide of a chambered shot.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Chuck was impressed. His old man had pulled a shotgun out of nowhere.

He moved slowly, raising his hands.

“It’s me.”

Herc’s voice was hard.

“Try again.”

“This is bollocks Herc, can’t you see...”

“Shut. Up. Scott.”

His dad was pale. Freckles stood out like someone attacked him with spray paint. He looked like he was about to cry. Chuck wasn’t any better.

“Dad” voice hitching, he tried again. “It’s _me_.”

 _Ghost drifting_ , Scott explained, the shit inside his head. His dad and uncle hadn’t drifted half as long and sometimes they could sense what each other was thinking, finish sentences and just _know_. Faced with the person he’d been tied to since the beginning, Chuck became stupid. He dropped his arms and nudged Max aside.

“If you have a shot, you take it.”

The shotgun was on the ground faster than he could blink.

“Jesus dad, you could have shot Max!” He shouted as Herc threw him in a hug.

“Forget the fucking dog for one second—! You’re alive.” His dad pulled up short, face crumpling as he grabbed his shirt. He seemed to be at a loss for words. “You’re really here.”

“Couldn’t let you take all the credit.” Chuck laughed, cheeks wet. “I’m back old man. I’m home.”


	12. Chapter 12

When Raleigh caught up to him, there was no tearful reunion, no explosive confrontation.

Herc was out in town for supplies. As Scott cheerfully confiscated the veteran pilot’s stock of weapons and ammunition, Chuck led him over the sandy hills where they could see waves crash against shore. The ocean was the same inky blue of a kaiju’s blood. There were no hurricanes to fight here but there was something on the wind. As though the storm from Guam was blowing its way into the outback.

“I wish I could take it all back.”

“Do you?”

Chuck sat in the sand, knees pulled up to his chest. His skin was red, sunburnt and peeling. But he noticed how the right side of his body was carefully covered up with loose sleeves. He looked good, he looked better than he had ever been in Hong Kong.

The prodigal son had come home.

“I wish I could hate you.” Chuck said suddenly flicking bits of sand from his feet. “But I don’t. Isn’t that pathetic?”

Raleigh winced.

“I’m glad.” He cleared his throat. “If it helps, I wish I could hate you too.”

“Herc tells me we didn’t get along.”

“Understatement.”

“So why did you?” Chuck swung his lambent eyes at him, silver and glowing in the clouded sun. “We weren’t friends. Why did you go along with it?”

And the unheard— _why were you the one looking for me_?

“A guy can’t change his mind?”

Chuck shot him a skeptical look.

Raleigh shrugged, feeling hot under the collar.

“After we closed the breach, everyone wanted to move on. I couldn’t. Just because we stopped the monsters from coming didn’t bring Yancy back, it didn’t bring our friends back or our families.”

“Because being a pilot is the only thing you know.” Chuck finished softly.

“Something like that. When I heard,” he paused “You know, I don’t even remember what I heard. I don’t know if I was looking for you, the Marshal, Yance, or some other idiot who decided fighting in a giant robot was cool.”

“You did.”

“Look where I am now.”

Chuck snorted out a laugh.

“My old man will kill you, you know that.”

“I thought Scott was getting rid of the guns.”

The younger man gave him a pitying look.

“Dad prefers knives.”

“Oh God” Raleigh uttered craning his head to see if there were any murderous Australians out on the road.

“Or fists.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m not trying to.” Chuck pointed out as he stretched his legs. “You’re not exactly the injured party here.”

“I’ve got a list.” Raleigh said after a moment of silence, dusting his ass and standing up.

Chuck stared at his hand dubiously when it was offered. Raising an eyebrow he asked “of?”

“Things I want to do before I die.”

“A bucket list.” Chuck said wryly then brightening, repeated “A Becket list.”

“Hah, that’s so clever.”

“I thought so.” The younger man didn’t take his hand but got to his feet neatly, brushing his hair back when it got into his eyes. “So what’s on the list?”

“I’m never going to stop being sorry for what I did, for not telling you.” He said solemnly.

“That’s a shitty list.” Chuck said but looked flattered. Even now, close together, he contrived to keep him at least half a foot way. Raleigh couldn’t blame him. “I wish” he continued “I could remember you.”

“I’m glad you don’t.” Raleigh admitted. “You hated my guts.”

“Did I?” Chuck echoed curiously.

He wilted when he heard the sound of a truck pull up alongside the house.

“Time to face the music.” Chuck said, becoming animated.

“Do you think I can maybe, swim across the Pacific.”

“Wouldn’t recommend it mate. We’ve got sharks. Better take your chances on land.”

“I wouldn’t call that a chance.” Raleigh grumbled, stumbling down the dunes.

At the bottom, Herc was waiting for them with his arms crossed. He clenched his jaws when he saw Raleigh. Scott, the asshole he was, waved from the house.

“I don’t trust you.” Chuck threw him a rebellious, semi-apologetic look. “I can’t.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“I don’t know if I ever will.”

“Again, it’s not your fault.”

Raleigh hated that he put the uncertainty in Chuck’s voice. Chuck, who by all rights should have been celebrating his survival with girls, boys, people who were free to worship without Goldberg’s machinations, his star rising so high that it would never go out. He was the hero, the martyr, the miracle, the son. And he ruined it before he knew what it was.

“I liked you.”

How big was this fucking dune? Raleigh couldn’t be hearing this.

He didn’t want to hear this.

Chuck’s voice could have been the wind. “I did love you.”

Raleigh swallowed “I loved you too.”

But Chuck was gone. Herc received his son tenderly, checking him over for whatever damage incurred in his absence. Ushering the younger man in with a bag of groceries and a six-pack, he regarded Raleigh for a while with icy blue eyes, lips tugged back to unveil a string of teeth. 

“Dinner’s at six.” Herc said finally. “There’s a steak in it for you if you can make it.”

He nodded.

“I’ll be there.”

“Good” Herc replied, turning around. “And Becket. Don’t try this again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you everyone for reading!
> 
> ...it only took me... half a year? More?
> 
> *Guiltily sneaks off*

**Author's Note:**

> I'm never going to accept that Chuck dies at the end. Chuck lives!


End file.
